Advances toward a new pronominal grammar in an Ohio Amish community

Abstract

This paper reports on an incipient change in the pronominal system of Pennsylvania German (PG). The neuter pronoun es ‘it’ is replacing the traditional pronoun sie ‘she’ to refer to certain kinship categories of NPs that are [+ human + female]. The findings show that the new variant is not only generationally differentiated, but that women under age fifty are undeniably in the vanguard of this change. The data are from interviews with conservative Amish PG speakers in Holmes County, Ohio recorded in 1991.